You want to get more traffic to your site, but you’re not sure how to get your site to show up in search engines. It’s critical to your business.
It’s not just about the quantity of traffic you get, it’s about the quality. Almost half of local searches turn into a visit or a phone call.
That means if you’re not easily found, you are losing business. Hiring an expert SEO company is a good first step in ranking higher on search engines. As you start looking for an SEO company, you need to figure out a way to find out who the experts are and who the wannabes are.
Read on to learn how to find the best SEO company for your business.
The Dark Side of SEO
Did you know that there’s a dark side to SEO? This is important to know because some SEO firms like to work with the dark side of SEO, which is called black hat SEO.
For years, websites would find creative ways to game search engine algorithms in order to rank higher. These websites were usually spam or malicious sites. They’d just want to get any kind of traffic to their sites.
Google and other search engines have a job to give their users the best search results or they will lose visitors and advertising revenue.
If search results produced spam at the top of listings, people aren’t going to put up with those results for long. Google created webmaster guidelines to guide webmasters on the best practices to rank higher in search engines.
Webmasters that use practices that fall outside of these guidelines are considered to be black hat practices. SEO firms that use the best practices that follow the guidelines are called white hat.
One of the black hat techniques that some companies will use is to stuff the keywords on the page as often as possible. They may try to redirect search results to unrelated pages.
These things may have worked 10 years ago. That’s no longer the case.
Why do you need to know all of this? If you don’t understand this concept and hire a black hat SEO company, your site could get penalized. You’d pay an SEO company money and you’d lose out on business.
How to Hire an Expert SEO Company
You should now understand why it’s important to hire experts. Your business could pay dearly for hiring the wrong company. Here are ways to can discern whether or not a company is made up of true SEO experts or not.
SEO Experience & Testimonials
You want to work with an SEO company that has years of experience under its belt. They should have a lengthy record of success and a list of happy clients.
Feel free to ask prospective companies for referrals that you can contact and ask for case studies.
Does someone need to be an expert in your industry? It could help, but it’s not necessary. The most important thing to know is your target audience and how they use search engines to find information.
They Stay Up to Date on Changes
The folks at Google seem to be busy these days because they just rolled out yet another core update. This follows the major updates that were made in January.
Google actually makes other minor changes to its algorithm every single day. Be sure to ask how SEO experts stay up to date with the changes.
They Don’t Guarantee Results
How can you tell if an SEO firm works with black hat SEO or they don’t know what they’re doing? They guarantee results.
Any SEO expert will know that you simply can’t guarantee results. They can provide insights based on their experience, but they will never say that you’ll rank in the top spot for a competitive keyword in 1-2 months.
Any SEO company that guarantees results is likely going to get your site penalized and you should stay away from them.
They Look at the Big Picture
Expert SEO companies know how SEO interacts with other forms of marketing. Many SEOs will work with your company and treat SEO separately from all other forms of marketing.
SEO experts will ask about your other marketing efforts to create an integrated campaign. They can provide valuable insights that will improve all of your marketing efforts, such as content marketing and social media.
They Are Transparent
The best SEO companies are transparent about their pricing, their contracts, and results. You’ll understand what they’ll do for your site.
They’ll have a contract that outlines the different approaches of SEO, what access they’ll need to your site and analytics, and what kind of results to expect.
An expert SEO company, like this SEO company, is also transparent about their pricing. They won’t tell you halfway through a contract that there is a sudden pricing change and you need to pay more.
Find the Best SEO Company for Your Business
Appearing at the top of search engines is tough for many businesses. You have to turn to experts to make it happen, which can save you time and make a tremendous difference on your bottom line.
You have to make sure that you find an expert SEO company that will follow white hat SEO practices and won’t risk your company’s business. The best SEO services will be transparent about their process and results.
They’ll also stay up to date on Google’s algorithm changes and have plenty of experience and testimonials to share. They’ll also take a long-term approach to getting the results that will make a difference in your business.
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